Why 'Halal Tax' Conspiracy Theories are So Hard to Stomach

On Easter Saturday, I attended a rally in Melbourne's Federation Square - one of sixteen "Reclaim Australia" rallies held across Australia to protest against what the organisers described as "halal tax, Sharia law and Islamisation."

Placards proclaimed that "Islam is the enemy of the West" and "Halal is Sharia law," and urged sympathisers to "Reclaim food free of Sharia."

When I asked Reclaim Australia supporters what they meant by their "Stop Sharia law!" slogan, they cited beheadings and burqas, but also angrily complained that Sharia was "in our food" in the form of halal certification. "It's hidden inside the cheese packet - you can't see it until you open it!"

The rally became headline news after anti-racist protestors clashed with Reclaim Australia supporters and the police.

The conspiracy theories vented at the Reclaim Australia rally followed a months-long social media campaign against halal certification. Boycotts were mounted against various Australian and international food corporations because the fees that they pay for halal certification supposedly fund terrorism and the plot to take over this proud country - and indeed the world.

As National Party MP George Christensen demanded to know in a blog post titled "Terror in the Tucker Box": "Are groceries in Australian trolleys funding a push for Sharia law, supporting jihad groups or even backing terrorist activity?"

Halal certification is the new burqa. And of course, burqas are the new hijab. And hijabs still make the odd appearance as a seasonal change from the ever-popular application to build a new mosque in a fair-dinkum Aussie neighbourhood.

All these "issues" - though the fact that they can even be described as "issues" is telling in and of itself - are manifestations of the same moral panic over signifiers of the Muslim presence in Australia, as well as in other Western societies.

What I find interesting about halal certification is that while burqas, hijabs and mosques are targeted for their visibility, for the ways in which they change the landscape of Australian society, halal certification is an object of fear because of its near-invisibility. As the anti-halal brigade points out, Cadbury's halal certification is so well-hidden that you probably wouldn't noticed it until after you'd purchased your chocolate.

This invisibility supposedly exemplifies the tactic of what is referred to as "stealth jihad" - the sneaky, undercover ways in which Muslims are infiltrating Australia right under "our" very noses without our even noticing. And what more intimate form of infiltration could there be than the smuggling of "Muslim" food into the bellies of unsuspecting Australian non-Muslims?

While the anti-halal brigade claims to be addressing an issue of national security, they also describe the act of consuming food that has been screened by a Muslim organisation as a physically repulsive and disgusting experience from which non-Muslims should be protected. Just as we do not regard food designated for pets or livestock to be fit for human consumption, food that has been screened by a Muslim organisation is to be regarded as abhorrent by non-Muslims. We may buy it, cook it, smell it, eat it and digest it without realising that anything is amiss, but once we are alerted to its true nature, we are sickened by the realisation of what we have consumed.

The anti-halal campaign illustrates the shortcomings of government-sponsored attempts to enhance the social inclusion of Muslims living in Australia by "normalising" their presence against the Australian landscape in the expectation that this will lead to greater levels of community harmony and acceptance.

Substandard English-language and media skills by Muslim spokespeople and community leaders have been seen as a barrier to social inclusion, hindering Muslims' ability to adequately communicate "the Muslim issue" to "mainstream" audiences. Community organisations have invested in media training for spokespeople and religious leaders, in some cases with the help of government funding. However, these presentable "mainstream Muslims" are regarded by hardcore anti-Muslim racists as far more dangerous than the unassimilated "misfit Muslims" because of their enhanced ability to infiltrate Australian society in order to undermine it from within.

The claim of the anti-halal brigade is that their concern does not extend to kosher food, since Jews do not pose the same level of threat as Muslims. However, the scare-mongering against halal certification follows a precedent set by antisemitic scaremongering about kosher certification (or the "Jewish tax," as white supremacists refer to it). Housewives are urged to purge their pantries of any products bearing the tiny "K," the insignia of the rabbinical council which imposes the certification scheme - described by one notorious leaflet as the "Kosher Nostra Scam."

As Martha Nussbaum and others have pointed out, Jews have long occupied the place of the abhorrent "hidden enemy" within Western societies, all the more foul and disgusting for their ability to conceal themselves. The campaign against halal certification is just one of the ways in which racism against Muslims has increasingly come to resemble historic patterns of racism against Jews.

For most Muslims living in Australia, maintaining a halal diet simply means abstaining from forbidden items such as pork and alcohol rather than scanning every item in our grocery carts for the halal certification stamp.

Yet the campaign against halal certification impacts on our lives, too. Its message is that, however discrete our presence, however well-integrated we may believe ourselves to be, we are not welcome here. The anti-Muslim racists behind the campaign want us to know that our absorption into Australian society makes them gag. We must be rejected, spat out, vomited from the body politic. In other words, purged.

Shakira Hussein is the McKenzie Postdoctoral Fellow at the National Centre of Excellence for Islamic Studies in the Asia Institute at the University of Melbourne.